Forest Green Rovers 1, Sheffield Wednesday 0. In March 2023, Owls fans were getting a sense of deja vu.
Two decades earlier, they'd provided the high point of Rushden & Diamonds' time in the Football League, a 0-0 draw in front of more than 22,000 in the third tier at Hillsborough.
Now, they were losing at the New Lawn during Forest Green's only League One season, too.
Picturesque Nailsworth, population 5,600, replaced Rushden & Diamonds' home town Irthlingborough as the smallest town ever to host EFL football when Gloucestershire club Forest Green rose to League Two in 2017, aided by backing from Ecotricity’s Dale Vince.
Like Rushden & Diamonds, they managed to ascend to the third tier following near-relentless progress – and, like Rushden & Diamonds, that’s where it all started to go wrong.
In Forest Green’s case, that started a little while before they shocked Sheffield Wednesday towards the tail end of the 2022-23 season.
“You got to play big clubs, but part of me thinks that promotion to League One might have been one of the worst things to happen to the club,” admits Alfie Ryan, Gloucestershire Live journalist and lifelong supporter.
Forest Green impressed so many by winning League Two that gaffer Rob Edwards was recruited by Watford, then Luton, while director of football Richard Hughes went to Portsmouth.
Vince was furious with both departures. With star players Kane Wilson, Ebou Adams and Nicky Cadden also taking up offers elsewhere, two of them for no transfer fee, the heart had been ripped out of the club.
“We tried a squad refresh in a league we weren’t equipped for, and it went really bad, really quickly,” says fan Chris Fisher. “Then there wasn’t a coherent plan. It was scattergun – one bad decision after another.
"The manager was different for each of the last four transfer windows: Ian Burchnall, Duncan Ferguson, David Horseman, then Troy Deeney.”
A surprise appointment for his first managerial job, Ferguson couldn’t come close to keeping Forest Green in League One, and having arrived in January, he left in July. Only a day earlier, he’d been offered up for an interview with FFT and hinted rather strongly at tension behind the scenes.
His replacement proved to be a Horseman of the apocalypse, as the club slumped into the League Two relegation zone. Then came Deeney’s 29-day stint, which saw him step up from player-coach, fail to win a game, humilate defender Fankaty Dabo in an interview and earn a four-match touchline ban for allegedly threatening to punch a fourth official (which Deeney disputed). He was sacked in January.
The steady hand of Steve Cotterill has brought five wins since mid-February – Forest Green still sit bottom of the table, but it's at least given them some hope of avoiding a damaging double drop. Rushden & Diamonds slid out of the Football League with two relegations in three seasons, and never returned.
“Cotterill knows how to manage people – that was Deeney’s glaring failure,” says Fisher.
There is some stability. Relegated or not, Dale Vince won’t leave as Rushden & Diamonds’ benefactor Max Griggs did, before the Northamptonshire club eventually went out of business. “I really don’t know what would happen if Dale Vince sold up,” admits Ryan.
“But he’s still committed. He has plans in place for a new stadium.” It’s only 18 years since Forest Green moved into the New Lawn. This raises the tantalising possibility of a New New Lawn.
“Some fans think he’s taken his eye off the ball due to Just Stop Oil, which he supported, and his political aspirations,” adds Fisher. “I don’t see it like that. His many managerial changes do at least show he is still invested.
"Once he puts people in the right places again and we go a whole year without changing anyone, I think we’ll go back to being successful.”
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